Pantomime
by Dlvvanzor
Summary: L has always hated mirrors... a fact of which BB is very, very aware. Oneshot.


**Disclaimer: I do not own Death Note or BB.**

**A/N: I dreamed the basic idea for this: BB in a house of mirrors. It was... interesting. XD**

* * *

This was the last place in the world L wanted to be.

He didn't like mirrors on the best of days, and here (obviously) he'd be unable to avoid them. He'd always hated them, ever since he was a kid at Wammy's: stupid, meaningless imitations of reality that showed too much, too many imperfections. Reminded him by force that he _did _have a face and that he _wasn't_ just a black gothic-style letter on a white screen somewhere in digital space... he had a body, a heart, and a soul, all of which needed— _demanded_— attention.

He wouldn't have come within a mile of this place if he didn't have a damn good reason.

Unfortunately, he _did_ have a damn good reason.

L shook his shaggy head. This was not the time to think about things like that. He had to focus. Watari knew where he was and he had the signal belt, but he was otherwise alone and he had no weapons, no backup.

He hated doing things like this himself (he was used to being the brains of the operation, not a foot soldier), but this was _his_ monster. His fault. His mistake, possibly his only one, undeniably his biggest. He couldn't send someone else in to correct it. And really, as locations to meet a monster went, it wasn't that threatening. The heavy blue and purple fabric was cheerful, or would have been in the daylight. The cloth of the open entryway flapped slightly in the wind against the poles supporting it. The breeze was light and cool, and the metal fastenings were tossed against their supports, clinking quietly as steel struck steel. It was rhythmic, almost, like a person tapping their fingernails against a table in slow impatience.

He had enough time. It was only thirty minutes past midnight, by his estimate, and he had a good internal clock (if not a good circadian rhythm) so he was fairly certain he was correct. It would be his monster's style to wait for 1:13 A.M. For 13:13 hours. He had always been a bit melodramatic.

L hesitantly took a half step forward. He could see that it was lit inside, but the first part of the entrance was very dark. The sky was starless and it was a new moon, so that wasn't helping either. He slapped quickly at an exposed part of his wrist. Mosquitoes, his long-time enemy. They adored him, probably because of his astronomical blood sugar.

It was just darkness. L was not afraid of darkness. There was nothing logical about fearing the dark, except perhaps that one might trip on an unseen obstacle.

(What came _in_ the dark, however, was another story altogether.)

Not that L was afraid. Of course not. L was above things like fear. Emotions were to be understood but not experienced, at least not by him. Obviously, he didn't have them.

He murdered another mosquito and sighed in an angry rush. This was ridiculous, and he was being eaten alive by these maddening creatures, so he forced all thought from his mind and charged right in.

For a moment he was engulfed in darkness, and he walked quickly, the reverberation of his footsteps muffled by the fabric. He collided headlong into a black curtain that blended into the darkness, and then he was through it and it fell closed behind him, and he immediately wished he was back in the dark.

The first thing he noticed was the music. It was tinny and infuriating; exactly the kind of music you'd expect to hear in a place like this. He effortlessly estimated that it was on a four minute loop.

That would get irritating.

The lights here were dim, shadowy. L's eyes adjusted easily, accustomed to the low glare of computer screens, and he cast his dark gaze around.

He was met with reflections of himself. Dozens of them on every side, from every possible angle. They stared back at him, unblinking as he was, reflecting the reflections endlessly until there were hundreds of him, smaller and smaller as they reflected each other forever.

His own eyes were everywhere, staring at him, emotionless as a machine, the face they belonged to in its usual practiced state of blankness. His wild hair- wild because he had to make it not matter, because it didn't matter, it _didn't_- was in worse tangles than ever, and he automatically raised a hand to flatten it a bit. His eternal reflections copied him in his brief vanity. He dropped his hand immediately, but not before he saw for the millionth time his hands. He had always hated his hands. They were even paler in the strange, dim light, even longer, bonier, more like spider legs than they usually were. He shoved his hands deep into his pockets and picked a direction at random.

L was a genius, but his perceptions were no better than anyone else's. He was just as prone to optical illusions as anyone. So, he was just as susceptible to being confused by the mirrors as anyone else.

Which he promptly proved by introducing his face to one of them.

He sighed and backed up, only to back into another mirror. He carefully made a quarter turn and proceeded.

He walked warily for a while, searching for a place that his monster would be likely to choose. There were distortion mirrors on his left, and he slowed his pace to examine his reflection in each of them. This one made him tall. This one made him short. This one made him wavy. This one made him fat. This one made him sallow and ill and mostly bone.

...No, that one was a normal mirror.

Trying to not let his mind wander down that path, he hurried on. The path he was on opened up into a chamber. It was an octagon, he noticed, not including the opening in which he stood. So a _nonagon_. Stupid, stupid, stupid.

He walked right to the middle.

It would be here. This is where his monster would choose to meet him. He knew, because his monster would know what the mirrors would do to him, that they'd make him doubt himself...

L looked down. He couldn't see his eyes anymore and relief flooded his system. This was ridiculous. He wasn't affected by mirrors! All a mirror could do was reflect his physical appearance back at him. It was just light; a mess of which colors were absorbed and which were refracted. Yes, he did have a body. Yes, it had physical and psychological needs. But that didn't _matter_. He could transcend it, rise above it. It was insignificant. Immaterial, in fact. And he certainly wasn't afraid to meet his monster— _the_ monster. He may have set the foundations for the monster to develop, but he hadn't caused it to happen. He may have set the curriculum, made it too hard, made the pressure too great... but it was not directly his fault that A had killed himself, and it was _certainly_ not his fault that B...

Of course it wasn't. The situation had made him emotional, but he was past that now. Silly, really, that a mirror could temporarily make him question himself.

He almost chuckled, and he looked back up.

He studied his reflection again, and all his calmness, all his collection, all his computer's logic drained from him in an instant.

His dark eyes went huge.

His reflection's crimson eyes did not.

"B."

A ghostly laugh.

And then BB was in every mirror and he was all around him, his white shirt stained red with the blood of someone he had probably killed especially for this occasion, his scarlet eyes huge and staring, showing no signs of laughing even while the sound was coming from his parted lips and reverberating off the mirrors. L reflexively jerked back, but that just got him closer to one of the other reflections, and he skittered back again, then again, until he was caught in a loop, jumping back like a terrified animal before scurrying to somewhere that was no safer.

This behavior was apparently amusing to BB because he laughed louder. Still it didn't reach his eyes.

He held a hand straight out, giving his appearance another dimension that the mirrors couldn't imitate. "I'm the real one, L. No need to scamper around in circles. You're making me ill."

L finally managed to locate him, and he spun around to face him. BB let his hand fall.

"Finally got it figured out?"

L still felt like he was gazing at a mirror. BB looked so impossibly like him, and the illusion was only aided by the fact that he imitated him in every way he could- in habit, in voice, in speech, in dress. He wore makeup to get the same paleness, to get the same darkness around the eyes that L had gotten from denying himself sleep. BB had even dyed his hair. He used to be blond.

L still had not spoken, but this seemed to suit BB just fine.

"So intelligent, L. Can a few mirrors _really _give you so much trouble?" he asked in his best- _perfect_- imitation of L's patented Innocent Voice.

The detective carefully reset his face to neutral. He could do that in any situation, no matter how he felt.

Even when he thought he might throw up for fear.

"What do you want, B?" he asked, easily forcing his voice to be calm.

BB absently examined one of the blood stains on his shirt. "What do I want?" He seemed pleased with either the question or the blood stain- it was hard to tell which. "I want what I've always wanted. I want what A wanted before he slit his wrists in your room on your bed that night, what C is _supposed_ to want, and what D gave up wanting when she saw what wanting it did to the rest of us. I want to be you."

He grinned and a chuckle crawled out of his throat, and his lips twisted halfway up his face to reveal... teeth that were identical to L's? How had he managed that?

"I am not afraid of you," L informed him.

"I'm sure that's a lie. I'm exactly like you, and _I'm_ sometimes afraid of me."

L didn't mean to say it out loud, but it came out anyway: "We are not alike!"

BB heard, and his grin grew impossibly. "Really? I'd always thought I'd created a fairly good imitation. Are you not afraid of the dark? I am."

"No," L said promptly.

"Do you not despise this tinny, pathetic excuse for music? I do."

"I find it charming."

BB continued as if he had not spoken. "Do you not reject your own humanity? Do you not pretend that you are capable of turning off your heart and your body and your soul, while all along you indulge all three?"

"No," L repeated firmly.

"You do not reject your humanity?" BB said, as if confused. "Then why do you _feel_, feel love, and hate, and pain, and joy, and guilt, like someone with a _heart_? Why, then, do you sleep, and eat, and fuck your Abercrombie model, and jerk off when you can't, like someone with a _body?_ And why, if asked, would you claim to have a soul?"

L opened his mouth but the words didn't immediately come out. BB waited patiently. "I... that is not enough to claim that we are alike more than any two people are. That is basic human function, and-"

"Then, do you not hate imitations?" the younger man interrupted. "I believe we have _that _in common."

"I do not hate imitations. An imitation becomes its own identity- if you _are_ a 'poser,' then you aren't posing. In fact, you would be posing if you pretended to _not_ be a poser, and-"

"Then why do you hate me? _I_ hate _you_. And I have never harmed you, nor given you any reason to."

"I-" L started, but BB cut him off.

"And why do you hate _yourself_, if not because you are an imitation? There is nothing else about you to hate, and you must have some reason. You hate that you are a living contradiction: you imitate what you wish you could be— a disembodied intellect— by rejecting your humanity, by trying to turn off your heart and your body and your soul, when you know that it is not possible and in fact do not even try, anymore."

L couldn't answer.

"I believe that I am _exactly _like you, and you are _exactly _like me."

He held his arms out to the sides, palms up. "Look into the mirror, Lawliet. _I_ am those things, and if I am, _you_ are."

L was frozen in place. His muscles had failed him, and in reality, his mind had too. Some small, still-functioning part of him was begging him to move, to run, to cover his ears, to scream, to ignore what he was hearing, to _do_ something, _anything_...

But L had been trained to seek the truth at all costs, and he could never ignore it when he found it.

L didn't even notice he was on his forearms and knees, that he was staring at the ground.

BB noticed, though, and his ghost's laughter filled the room again like smoke leaking in under a door.

"I'm right, aren't I?" he sneered. There was no humor in his voice now. He paused as if considering. "Oh. Well, I'm just like you, so I'm _always _right. And so, since I'm also talking about myself, I believe I'm at liberty to say a few more things." He paused again.

"You're nothing, L Lawliet," he told him. "You, yourself, as a person, are nothing. You've never done a thing as _you_. You hide behind your title- how _funny_ that it's the same as your first name!- and think that if you do something as L, anything at all, then Lawliet is justified in taking up space in this world, that he somehow becomes _not_ a cowardly, useless lump of human flesh and waste of space." BB watched L's face as it twisted and contorted, trying to control itself, failing.

"And how many names to you have, now, at last count? L, Lawliet, L Lawliet, Ryuzaki, Ryuga, Deneuve, Eraldo Coil. How many more are there? What does your lover call you late at night when you make him scream your name? What does Wammy call you, or Roger? Do you even remember which name is real, anymore?"

There were tears in L's eyes now. He wanted to stop them but he could barely hold them back. He wanted to stand but he could barely hold himself up. He wanted to look at the man that was tormenting him, but he could not lift his head. And, oh, he _wanted_. He wasn't supposed to _want_. An intellect can't _want_, it can't _feel_, it can't _desire_, it can't _hurt_...

"Someday, L, I will take your place." BB's voice had dropped down to a deadly whisper. "_I_ will be L, and I'll kill you that day if I have to. I'd rather avoid it, but I _will_ take your place by _any_ means necessary. And you know what, L? On that day that I take over?"

He waited. He actually waited, and L was expected to respond.

"What?" he managed to whisper.

BB smiled and leaned down until he was an inch from L's ear. "No one will notice a difference."

BB left him, then, and L was alone in the hall of mirrors, and all eight of his reflections wept with him, as did the reflections of the reflections, and the reflections of the reflections of the reflections, all the way back, forever and ever, always.

And when L finally managed to lift his head, he saw his tear-streaked face a million times over, and he _was_ human, he _was_, and he wanted a shower, for his body, to wash off the feeling; and he wanted to be held, for his heart, to tell him he wasn't nothing; and his soul, his soul itself, it was breaking, because he _had_ a soul and a heart and a body and he didn't want _any _of them and because BB was right and he _was _a person, he _wasn't _just a letter, and... and...

And because if he was a person, then he was human. And if he was human, then he was nothing more than an imitation.


End file.
